I talked to my ex husband yesterday. It is unusual. I didn’t talk to him for 6 or 8 months, and twice now in the last 10 days. He has led himself down the primrose path to destruction. I believe that now, now that he has created so much chaos for himself,, he is reaching out to the one person who he knows always loved him. He needed help sorting something out, and I was able to cut through the bullshit for him, (which is all self created by him), and let him see reality.

Then he told me his aunt passed away a couple of days ago. This is unusual, in that this is the 3rd (at least) member of his family to die since we’ve been apart, but the first one he’s told me about. It was too late for me to go to the wake or the funeral, but at least I can send her children a card. They were part of my life for 40 years, I was grateful that he told me. Which means to me, that he perhaps doesn’t see me anymore as the cause of all his problems, but as someone who just had to save her own life,, (and our sons). Perhaps it means that going forward our relationship will be based on commonalities, on the better part of our history, instead of the abuse he piled on my son and I in an effort to maintain control. I hope so. I would like to see him as a friend. It’s been 8 1/2 years since I left him.

I would hope that the same can be true of S and I. S was the first man I was involved with since my divorce. I feel still the unconditional love I have always felt for him, despite the ugliness that came up in the last few days. I know we can’t be together as we were right now, but I am not forecasting the future. How can we know?

My friend A left on a grand adventure this morning. Downsized from a 3800 sq ft beautiful home to a camper, with his son. They are headed out to the Olympic Peninsula eventually, stopping along the way where ever they feel the desire. By October he will be in Texas at his brothers ranch, and then on to the Southwest in the spring. I went to see him, and he told me, “Look at me, I have to say this now, I won’t have another chance. I know I scared you with it before. But, I just want you to know I love you so much. You have forever changed me.” I still do not feel the passion for him that he feels for me, and I’m glad, because I was just able to be excited for him to take on this adventure. He’s a sweet man, we will stay in touch.

But the whole point is, love never dies, does it? It can change, and transform, but it’s energy. Energy can’t be created or destroyed, only transformed. My love for these 3 men in my life will continue to change, but it will always exist. No matter what has been thrown at me, the hate, the anger, the viciousness that can accompany pain….in the end, it is always love that is left.

I’m at peace with all of this. I’m happy to have found a way back to peace with all of them.

Reality is the conjectured state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. – Wikipedia

Trying to sort through memories, dreams, visions, events, people who came and left in the last year. How much of it was real? How much of it was conjecture on my part?

What was real, aside from putting my head on my own pillow at night, by myself. The chaotic energy of my son in the house. The morning meditations. The mundane household tasks.

How much of love was real? How much of the passion was real? How much of it was just created. Just me trying so hard to get what I wanted.

So…how much of the ugly was real? If the love maybe wasn’t completely real, maybe all the ugly wasn’t either.

I’ve been reading Byron Katie’s books on The Work. The four questions….

1. Is it true? 2. Can you know absolutely that it’s true? 3. How do you react, how do you feel, when you think that thought? 4. Who would you be without that thought?

Love never hurts. It never makes you feel bad about yourself. It never makes you insecure. If it’s doing that 75% of the time, and bringing you joy 25% of the time, it’s not love. Especially, when you’re the only one whose thinking it is.

Well….whether or not it was love isn’t really important now, because the love, if that’s what it was, is gone. Poof! In a big cloud of epithets cast for reasons not fully understood, it’s gone.

I think though, it’s floating around in the universe, waiting to come back where it’s real.

The first was cruel, mean, ugly. It proves that doing it was the right thing. How I ever thought it could be any different I can’t fathom right now. But I was called the c-word for the last time. That’s for sure.

The other good bye was the opposite. Sweet loving, kind, gentle. I thank the universe for it, it was salve on an open wound. Sad, too. Sometimes you really don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.

My life upended yesterday. I’m grateful for the upending. I think all the drama fell out and fell on the floor, got swept up and put in the trash. I slept better than I have in a week.

I sat outside last night for a few minutes before I went to bed. I was tired, I have been sleeping poorly, as I guess could be expected from the events of the weekend. I hadn’t talked to S for most of the day. I gazed at the half moon, with thin clouds racing by it. Sitting out there, I could feel S’s sadness. I knew he was at his home, 50 miles away, and feeling bad. I messaged him, and my intuition, that connection we have, was right.

I know he just doesn’t get it, why I just can’t do it anymore, why things can’t stay as they were for me.

The only thing that is permanent, is change.

My emotions of the last week, maybe 2, have been more and more to separate our lives, to end this relationship that never could get off the ground. I look at him, and I love him in that unconditional way. I accept who he is, I accept the direction he has wanted to take. He is the one who has come to me in times when he’s been introspective, to tell me he needs to be on his own, he needs to find out who he is by himself, without being attached to someone.

I totally support that. I can’t imagine being this age and not knowing what I want. I have told him to do it, to keep me in the loop if he wants. I have told him I’m not going anywhere right now. No one can forsee the future. But if we keep the communication open, we can remain friends, and honor the connection that I find rather exceptional. It doesn’t mean that we have to be intimate, it means that we can remain close friends, if he wants to.

Right now, we want different things. Neither of us can cross over to the other side, not and remain true to ourselves.

I know…that in the end, he knows that, he will get it, that we want such different lives. At least, that’s how it seems to me. Since he doesn’t know what he wants, I guess I can’t speak for him. But I certainly want something different from the relationship I have had had with him, than he wants.

I think it’s just hard to be single at this age. I don’t think anyone makes it to being single in their 60’s and doesn’t have baggage, even though I have seen profiles of men who say they don’t. They do, they have just buried it. I’ve tried to let mine bubble up and deal with it when it does. It’s not always easy. Like I told S, early in our relationship, he was the first man in my life since my marriage, and even though I thought I took plenty of time to be aware of my baggage, my triggers, there are some you don’t even know about until you are in a relationship. And lucky him…he got to experience those.

Don’t worry, he had plenty of his own, to pay me back, lol.

But the fact remains….I’m ready to move past friendship. I’m ready for someone to love me, the way I loved him. I’m using past tense, because I feel like there’s no way back. It will take time for those emotions to ebb to the actual flow of the events.

It was fun, for awhile. But since I came back from Florida in March, when he came to my house and came as close to saying he loved me as he ever would, it’s been work. The enthusiasm is gone, the desire to just hang out isn’t there. For him it’s backed off to wanting an occasional “nice afternoon”. For me, it’s progressed to “I would have liked to spend Saturday night until Monday night with you this weekend.”

How’s that ever going to work?

It’s not. And I’m OK with it. I really am. Enough water has passed over the dam that my grip has loosened, I am not holding on any longer. I’m sure S’s grip is also loose, he maybe isn’t as clear on why as me, I hope he gains that clarity.

(I have put up and trashed this post 3 times. I apologize if I have confused anyone.)

This weekend I have spent a lot of time alone. Except for a trip to the grocery store on Saturday, and a short visit from a family member on Sunday, until this afternoon I was alone. Since that is what happened, I guess that’s what was supposed to happen.

There was some ugly non–productive texting between S and I, and a phone call. There was a lot of rum and a lot of wine, as I struggled to deal with the reality of S and I.

S….is an enigma. He likes it that way, he likes people having to put together a 100,000 piece jigsaw puzzle to understand him. He texts me out of the blue, “If I were in your driveway right now, what would I see?” He asks me, point blank, hours later, “Did you fuck A today?” Knowing, good and well, I have no interest in A that way, that we are friends, nothing more. Just to cause chaos in my head, to stir the pot. He also knows that sex is an expression of love for me, that it is never for the sake of sex. I just can’t do that. Yet he would ask me that, and then pretend he was joking. Ha ha.

He doesn’t want what I want. It’s simple. I am ok with it. I am not sad, or crying. As I said yesterday, I want to honor myself. I want something different, I KNOW what I want. S does not, so he needs to go figure that out. When he does, maybe I’ll still be around if he’s interested then. Maybe I won’t. Maybe he’ll find someone else who is in alignment with what he wants. But this constant battle of wills to have our relationship blossom into something more than an afternoon on a 3 day weekend, (which was my dream) or to stay as a “nice afternoon” of sex ( his dream) is worn out on me. I’m not up for it any longer. He’s welcome to find someone who wants that. It’s just not me.

I wish he would just let it go. I don’t know why we keep going around and around. Circular conversations that go nowhere, nothing gets accomplished. I’ve dealt with them before, in a previous life. I don’t want to deal with them anymore.

I am leaving well enough alone. I don’t want to play a game with him. Or anyone for that matter. I’m 64 years old, I want to fall in love with a man who can grow with me, relate to me, wants what I want. I can really only deal with straightforward communication right now, at least from the people who are close to me. Of course, I’m not sure that circle includes him anymore. I don’t think we’re done quite yet, but I think the connection is thinning.

I went on the deck when I got up, with my coffee, my meditation, my lap top. I had a friend over for awhile, I stayed outside all day.

Meditation was on “Honoring Your True Self”. I chose that one from my Deepak Chopra app on my phone, because, I have not felt that I was honoring myself. Others also were not. But….I don’t really care whether others do or not, as long as I do.

I have been beating myself up for making stupid choices. For ignoring signs. For doing that thing that we are so warned about: Not believing someone when they tell us who they are.

S would occasionally tell me I should dump him, and run, because he was going to hurt me. He told me that last January….and then went and fucked the prison whore. I took him back, I couldn’t let go.

Why? I don’t know. I think that more than being driven by love, I was driven by the uncanny connection we have had, reading each other’s emotions from a great distance, knowing what each other felt when we had not been talking and had no knowledge. I have never had that kind of connection with another person, and it seemed something worth holding onto.

Now…he has been pulling away since spring. I have been pulling him back. For the same reason. It is clear he did not ever, nor would ever love me. At least, not in the way I needed. I think he did, in his own way and in his own time.

Did I love him, really?

I don’t know. I enjoyed his company, and I could read him, if I was with him, or if I was not. I think I mistook that for love.

I have unconditional love for almost everyone, at least, I try. So, for him too. When he told me his secrets, I forgave him. I still do, even tho some of the things he told me many people would judge as unforgivable. Things he never told another soul.

Why me? I don’t know. The connection, I guess. He felt it too. He felt I understood him, I would guess, though he never said that. He did this early on in our relationship. He told me things he had not told either of his ex-wives or his ex gf.

He had developed a personna for them, trying to be who he wanted to be, who he hoped to be, I guess. For me, he didn’t feel the need.

I’m not angry with him now. I think he had a need, now, in his life, to have someone in the background, who knew his secrets. With whom he could fully be himself without pretense. Our connection enabled that. So…I’m not mad about his playing me, his keeping me a secret now, because I think I understand what my place was in his life as far as he was concerned. It was not done maliciously. It was a need he had, that I fulfilled.

It just wasn’t what I wanted out of the relationship. I wanted a man in my life, who could and would grow to love me. Who would let me share his life, as he shared mine.

S couldn’t do that, because if he let me into his life, his kids, his friends…..then I was no longer that safe place for him. I might see the difference in who they thought he was, vs who I thought he was. I might slip….and let them somehow know he wasn’t the man they thought he was.

I get it. I really do.

He had a need to be real to someone, because he holds his cards so close to his chest, because he has created a personna for others that was not really the authentic hm, that was greater than his need for honesty with me.

I’m still not mad about it. I don’t want him in my life, now, because I see that what I want will never ever be possible. If I stayed with him, I would have to remain his secret place to go, so he could feel some relief from the act he needed to put on for people every day.

I love him kind of unconditionally. I feel sorry for him, that he’s felt he had to do this with his life. He’s been doing it all his life, and doesn’t know how not to. It’s not romantic love when you feel the unconditional love for someone, it’s acceptance of who they are.

So, after all is said and done, after I’ve sat with my sadness and my anger, I feel for the guy. I needed more…I want more….he can’t give it. He has to keep showing up at the ex’s BBQ’s and maintain the personna that everyone believes is him.

Everyone but me.

I don’t look at him as a bad man, or a good man, just a man. Just a man I knew and once loved. I wish him peace. I don’t know what will become of the connection that we have had. I don’t suppose it will disappear, but I think I need to try to ignore it. It leads me in the wrong direction, away from the things I want out of the rest of my life. I’m not sure I CAN ignore it, but for the time being, while my heart heals, with this kind of new epiphany of understanding I have, I need to ignore it, and honor my own true self.